ID Cards and The Verichip

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Millions of children to be fingerprinted

Jamie Doward, home affairs editor
Sunday July 30, 2006
The Observer

British children, possibly as young as six, will be subjected to compulsory fingerprinting under European Union rules being drawn up in secret. The prints will be stored on a database which could be shared with countries around the world.

A portable fingerprint scanner on display. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty

The prospect has alarmed civil liberties groups who fear it represents a 'sea change' in the state's relationship with children and one that may lead to juveniles being erroneously accused of crimes. Under laws being drawn up behind closed doors by the European Commission's 'Article Six' committee, which is composed of representatives of the European Union's 25 member states, all children will have to attend a finger-printing centre to obtain an EU passport by June 2009 at the latest.

The use of fingerprints and other biometric data is designed to prevent passport fraud and allow European member states to meet US entry visa requirements, but the decision to fingerprint children has disturbed human rights groups.

The civil liberties group Statewatch last night accused EU governments of taking decisions in which 'people and parliaments have no say'. It said the committee's decisions were simply based on 'technological possibilities - not on the moral and political questions of whether it is right or desirable.'

'This is a sea change,' said Ben Hayes, spokesman for Statewatch. 'We are going from fingerprinting criminals to universal fingerprinting without any real debate. In the long term everyone's fingerprints will be stored on a central database. You have to ask what will be the costs to a person's privacy.'

According to secret documents obtained by Statewatch, the committee will make it compulsory for all children from the age of 12 to be fingerprinted. However, several of the committee's member states are lobbying to bring the compulsory age limit down. Sweden tells the committee it 'could agree with a minimum age of six years for passports'.

The UK, meanwhile, observes that it has collected the fingerprints of five-year-old asylum seekers with no 'significant problems'. Since February the Home Office has been fingerprinting children as young as five at asylum centres in Croydon and Liverpool. It took the decision amid concerns children were being registered by several families in order to claim more benefits.

Refugee support groups, including the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, have described the action as 'intrusive'. The JCWI also expressed concerns that fingerprints kept on file could be held against children if they tried to return to the UK in later life.

Fingerprinting young children is considered difficult because their fingers have yet to fully develop. The European Commission notes: 'Scientific tests have confirmed that the paillary ridges on the fingers are not sufficiently developed to allow biometric capture and analysis until the age of six.'

A commission spokesman said initially only member states would have access to their citizens' fingerprint data. However, after the Madrid bombings the commission signalled its intention for all fingerprints to be stored on one database that could one day be accessed by each EU state. 'Whether access for third countries will be allowed has to be decided by the EC at a later stage,' the spokesman said. 'Nevertheless, full interoperability is ensured, should the EU decide to give access to third countries.'

Such a move opens up the possibility that the fingerprints of British children could one day be accessed by foreign intelligence services. 'Secure passports make a lot more sense than ID cards,' said Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty. 'But only as long as the information that is kept is no more than necessary and is not shared with other countries.'

source - http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1833407,00.html

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Malaysia to fingerprint all new-born children

Blunkett curses missed opportunity...

By John Oates
Wednesday 4th May 2005

Malaysia’s National Registration Department is doubtful that it would be useful to fingerprint all babies born in the country.

Malaysian police are proposing all new-borns should have their fingerprint and footprints taken before they leave hospital, according to the BBC. The National Registration Department is concerned that prints from such a young child will be unreliable for identifying the terrible toddlers.

The NRD is “keeping an open mind” but is worried that such fingerprints will still be changing and so won’t be useful for identification, according to the Malaysian Star. Police believe software could allow for such changes in the prints.

Malaysians are already required to give fingerprints at age 12 when they receive their “MyKad” ID card. Their prints are taken again when they are 18. Malaysia is aiming to have everyone over the age of 12 carrying a smart ID card by the end of the year.

Civil liberties groups in the country have attacked the proposal as intimidating and likely to create a climate of fear.

Newborn kids are already issued a “MyKid” - similar to an ID card but without fingerprints or photos.

More details here - http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2005/5/4/nation/10856015&sec=nation

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Headmaster justifies fingerprinting pupils
'We don't have to ask parents'

By Mark Ballard
The Register
Monday 11th September 2006

The headmaster of Porth County Comprehensive School in South Wales has defended fingerprinting all 1,400 of his pupils days after their parents were told about the scheme last Wednesday.

Children had their fingers scanned for a system that will replace the old fashioned school register with biometric scanners in every class room.

Parents campaigning against having schools take their childrens' fingerprints have complained that it is being done without their consent, and sometimes without their knowledge.

Porth County Comprehensive headmaster Stephen Bowden told El Reg: "As far as we were concerned, it wasn't necessary for us to seek parental consent in this. It's a system that has been approved by the DfES and it's supported by Capita SIMS."

Pupils at the school were given letters about the fingerprinting to take home to their parents last Tuesday and Wednesday.

"All the parents received a letter at the beginning of term asking them to contact us if they had any concerns. We had a couple of parents call...when we explained the procedure and the reasons why they were happy with that," said Bowden.

"There are 1,400 students in the school and we had two phone calls...the parents were perfectly happy."

The system, called Vericool, was developed by Anteon, a subsidiary of General Dynamics, a firm that specialises in developing systems for the military and intelligence services.

It will register children for lessons by scanning their fingers when they enter a classroom at the start of a lesson.

Bowden said it would give the school a means of "effective administration" and help in "reducing the bureaucratic burden" of staff taking registrations themselves. It had cost the school £25,000.

"By the time I've put this together, I can assure any parent that their child is safely in school and on the premises...or we can purely or simply track students to see if attendance affects their progress," he said.

But Bowden said he would not know how much more efficient the system would be than a manual register until after its installation was complete in January.

David Clouter, a campaigner at Leavethemkidsalone.com, said experts had reported on his site that the fingerprinting systems being used by schools were so unreliable that manual registers would still have to be taken to assure the location of pupils in the event of a fire.

He also said that taking the register was an important way for teachers to establish contact with each individual pupil at the start of a class.

Terri Dowty, a former teacher and director of Action on Rights for Children (ARCH) told the Guardian in March: "When I was teaching, attendance-taking was an important part of the day. You would call the name, look up, and make eye contact - notice them for a second. It was an important human part of the day."

source - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/11/porth_county_kiddyprinting/

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Parents prepare to sue fingerprint grabbers
Schools to be challenged over biometrics

By Mark Ballard
Friday 6th October 2006

Parents are preparing a legal challenge to schools that have fingerprinted their children without their consent.

Janine Fletcher, a solicitor and concerned parent who instigated the legal response, said she became concerned when she learned that 70 schools in her home county of Cumbria had taken childrens' fingerprints without seeking parental consent.

"It's a breach of human rights," she said. "Lots of parents are willing to take legal action. There's a clear case."

"We are trying to get a list of distressed parents together who are prepared to take group action," she said. "Every child has a right to privacy."

Richard Furlong, a barrister who has advised the campaign group Leave Them Kids Alone, which is co-ordinating the action, said: "Once the kids fingerprints are taken, the schools are obliged in law to disclose the fingerprint to the police if they are investigating a crime. All of a sudden, police have a huge database to query. But the police only usually have access to your fingerprints when you are arrested."

"All of a sudden they've got this great database and in twenty years time they'll have everyone's fingerprints through the back door," he said.

"People say, 'if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear', I always say, well how much do you earn then?" he added.

Many schools put their fingerprint systems in over the school holidays and informed parents by letter on the first day of term, said Fletcher. Parents weren't being given enough time to disagree with the scheme, let alone think through the ramifications of their children being fingerprinted.

The group are preparing to take a test case against a school that has fingerprinted children without parental consent.

source - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/06/fingerprint_action/

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Teachers break silence on fingerprinting children
Jenkins, get that OFF the scanner NOW

By Mark Ballard
Thursday 14th September 2006

The National Union of Teachers has said that schools should not fingerprint children without the consent of parents.

But UK teaching unions are being slow to formulate firmer policies on the issue because, it appears, teachers have not complained to their unions about the fingerprinting schemes that, according to parents' campaign group leavethemkidsalone.com, has already fingerprinted 700,000 primary school children in 3,500 schools without seeking parental consent.

A spokeswoman for the National Union of Teachers said today: "Fingerprinting has to be done in consultation with parents and teachers and not imposed."

"By consultation, we are talking about proper consultation, giving parents time to respond, not installing the machines and then asking parents," she said.

Schools like Porth County Comprehensive in South Wales have fingerprinted children within days of telling parents in take-home letters about the plans.

David Clouter, spokesman for Leavethemkidsalone, said in a statement today: "Parents should be informed and asked for prior written consent [for fingerprinting], as is required for a whole range of far less intrusive school activities."

"Parents should also be given clear assurances on exactly who will have access to the data on these systems and under precisely what circumstances," he added.

A spokesman for Britain's largest teaching union, the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, said its policy people were deciding what to do about school fingerprinting. Neither unions had the activities reported to them by concerned members.

Clouter said it was a sign of the way the fingerprinting of school children was being managed: "Sliding it under people's noses and then presenting it as a fait accompli.

source - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/14/nut_on_kiddyprinting/

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Schools can fingerprint children without parental consent
DfES qualifies its stance

By Mark Ballard
Thursday 7th September 2006
Parents cannot prevent schools from taking their children's fingerprints, according to the Department for Education and Skills and the Information Commissioner.

But parents who have campaigned against school fingerprinting might still be able to bring individual complaints against schools under the Data Protection Act (DPA).

DfES admitted to The Register that schools can fingerprint children without parents' permission.

This position has also been taken by the Information Commissioner, who interprets and enforces the Data Protection Act - the law privacy campaigners hope might be used to stop schools fingerprinting their children.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is drawing up guidance on the use of fingerprints for purposes other than law-enforcement. The guidance will say once and for all whether parents can prevent their children's fingerprints being taken.

David Smith, deputy Information Commissioner, said it was a complex issue that was still being worked out, but it was likely that parents did not have an automatic right to decide whether their children's biometrics could be taken by a school.

"The Data Protection Act talks of consent of the individual - essentially that's consent of the child," he said.

"Now there's a requirement that consent is informed and freely given. That will depend on the age of the child," he said.

The idea is that as long as children can understand the implications of what they are being asked to do, they can give consent without deferring to their parents.

"The Data Protection Act is about the pupil's rights, not the parents' rights over the children's information," said Smith.

The ICO set a precedent of sorts over the consent of children with regard to direct marketing. It decided that kids could sign up to get free gumpf through the post without parental consent unless they were required to hand over detailed personal information.

You might think that a child's fingerprint is one of the most personal pieces of information that can be stored in a database. But the type of information is irrelevant to the Act. Even a child's age is of little importance to the DPA, said Smith.

More important than consent even, the guidance will consider how a fingerprinting system has been applied: whether it is reasonable and proportionate. If a school wants to use children's fingerprints to control their use of its library books, anti-biometric parents might not have much room for protest within the law.

Even where the act does consider consent of the child, it cannot rule in a blanket fashion so as to, say, proclaim that schools should seek parental consent before fingerprinting children below a certain age.

"The capacity of a child to make a decision varies from child to child, while some decisions are more involved than others," said Smith.

What do you do, Smith asks, if a child refuses to have its fingerprint taken but a parent insists that it should?

The DPA is clear on this. The parent only has limited opportunity to control the consent of their child.

"Where the child isn't capable of giving consent then under the data protection act it should go to the parents," said Smith.

Schools might not even have to inform parents as long as the fingerprinting system doesn't offend the DPA and children have the capacity to decide for themselves, he said.

But who gets to say whether a particular child is capable of consenting to their biometrics being taken - whether a child understands the implications of what they are being asked to do, or whether the decision should be deferred to the parent?

"That's for the school to decide," said Smith.

But campaigners against fingerprinting, such as www.leavethemkidsalone.com, don't trust schools to make that decision.

"There will always be a question in a school environment about whether consent is given," agreed Smith. "The teacher/pupil relationship makes it difficult to obtain freely given consent".

Moreover, in practice the decision is not likely to be given to individual children but presented to the class as a whole. A judgement, Smith conceded, was likely be made about the ability of a class as a whole to make a judgement.

So there might be room for concerned parents to manoeuvre: they might show that consent was not fairly sought or given, with children being given unbiased information to aid their decision. More broadly, they might argue that the decision about whether to hand over fingerprints and other biometrics goes beyond their ability to comprehend.

"[The guidance] will address consent, but it will make clear that what is essential is, [if] what's done is reasonable and proportionate, then consent wouldn't be required," said Smith.

The DPA has scope only to see that fingerprinting is done for a specific purpose, that only necessary data is collected, kept for the necessary time, and used for the allotted purpose by only the allotted people, as long as it is stored securely and not shared willy nilly.

Asked to clarify the legal basis on which its claim was made, the DfES conceded that schools had to ensure their fingerprinting schemes were compliant with the Data Protection Act and the Human Rights Act.

DoES said: "[Schools] should also inform parents and get consent unless the child is of 'sufficient maturity that s/he can give consent her/himself'."

According to Anne Marie Hutchinson OBE, head of the Children Department at Dawson Cornwell law firm, the applicable areas of the Human Rights Act (and Children's Act) legislation concur with the ICO's interpretation of the Data Protection Act: children below the age of 16 can consent if they can demonstrate they have the legal capacity - the nous - to do so; otherwise, parents decide. That will vary child by child and according to decision they are being asked to make.

Unless they can find a way of bringing a case on broad principles, parents who dislike a school fingerprinting their kids without parental consent will have to fight on a case by case basis, based on the legal capacity of their child or the approach of the school.

Yet, as biometrics have already made such rapid encroachments into Britain's schools, it is likely that by the time any such cases get heard, fingerprinting will already be a daily routine for many British children.

source - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/07/kiddyprinting_allowed/

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Parents' concern over school library thumbprints

Tuesday 14 March 2006
London SE1 website team

Parents at Charles Dickens Primary School have expressed concern over a new library lending system that uses biometric data from pupils.

The leaflet handed out last week

Amanda Penfold, whose daughter attends the Lant Street school, said: "I do not want my child’s thumb print to be on any database, and am horrified that Ms Owens [the headteacher] thinks this is acceptable. The indoctrination of school children into the need for such personal identification measures has been used in America for some time, and, I believe, is an attempt to make acceptable the idea of compulsory personal identification of all adults and children for government monitoring purposes."

Ms Penfold, who has lived on the Rockingham Estate for more than two decades, was last week joined at the school by Green Party London Assembly Member Jenny Jones to hand out leaflets to parents.

In a statement, headteacher Elizabeth Owens - who was last year named teacher of the year - told us: "We had professional advice over the best available computer software, and the chosen, very popular, system involves the use of thumb-printing for identification. The actual thumb-print image is not stored and the data cannot be used for any other purpose.

"This week we informed parents of the lending system and thereby gave them the opportunity to comment on any issues they might have with this. We did not expect any problems, but those who have expressed dislike for the idea of thumb-printing can ask for their child to be identified by a barcode system instead."

The school's new library opened last November.

source - http://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/2055

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MPs condemn school fingerprinting
After parents threaten action

By Mark Ballard
Tuesday 17th October 2006
The Register

Shadow ministers for the Libdems and Conservatives have condemned schools that fingerprint children.

Liberal Democrat shadow education secretary Sarah Teather and Conservative shadow minister for schools Nick Gibb spoke out on Teachers TV. The issue is coming to a head because parents are preparing a case against schools that have installed fingerprinting systems over the summer and started fingerprinting children without their parents' consent.

"They should not be doing this," Gibb said of fingerprinting schools. "They should find another method of identification for borrowing library books."

He said there were serious civil liberties issues about a government that amassed databases of people's fingerprints.

Teather told Teachers TV: "Fingerprinting three year olds to borrow library books is clearly excessive and completely over the top. There's a serious issue here. The government must get some legal advice."

A parent on the programme said her trust in the school had been destroyed after she learned it had taken her child's fingerprints without her permission: "They've taken part of her identity we didn't give permission for," she said.

Headteachers have rejected accusations that they are installing "big brother technology".

Janine Fletcher, a solicitor helping the campaign, said fingerprinting was in breach of the Children's Act, the Human Rights Act, and other laws.

She wants a judicial review to clarify what biometric information schools could take from children and for what purposes.

The Department for Education and Skills said it was "up to schools" what they did, but suggested they should get legal advice from their local authorities about whether they were in breach of the Human Rights Act before they fingerprinted pupils.

They should also inform parents, or get the consent of the child if the child is "mature" enough.

Teachers TV said the Tories had pledged to ban the fingerprinting of children if they were elected, but the Conservative party office said they were merely "not in favour" of children being fingerprinted.

source - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/17/mps_on_kiddyprinting/

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Kiddiprinters! EU biometric ID plans reach out for the children

You're never too young to get a record, say interior ministers

By John Lettice
Monday 31st July
The Register

The EU is planning to fingerprint children from as young as six, and earlier just as soon as it is technically feasible, according to documents obtained by Statewatch. The matter has already caused considerable debate (albeit behind closed doors and with no visible civil liberties concerns) among member states, but is being pushed ahead as part of a broader push towards biometric identifiers, without reference to the European Parliament.

Or indeed anybody much. The mechanism being used is an "Article 6" committee composed of representatives of the 25 governments and chaired by the Commission. This one was originally set up to decide on "technical specifications" for visas, then went on to cover residence permits for third country nationals, and then the matter of EU ID cards. In some areas the decisions taken are beyond the legal powers of the bodies involved (this is particularly obvious in the case of biometric security standards for ID cards), but matters can nevertheless proceed via the creation of 'soft law', non-binding "conclusions" of the Council of Ministers, and 'standards' agreed by ad-hoc groups of countries (see Statewatch with reference to biometric ID, and this House of Lords report for a more general review of the process).

The child fingerprinting document cites the regulation of 13 December 2004 standardising on a facial image and two fingerprints, which was purportedly "in accordance with ICAO provisions" - fingerprints are in accordance with ICAO "provisions", but are not an ICAO requirement. The overdesign of EU passport standards meanwhile bleeds into an effort "to follow a consistent approach to the use of biometric identifiers" - i.e. visas, residence permits, ID cards. All of this blamed on ICAO, sort of.

This particular document, from the Presidency, is in a sense more liberal than might otherwise have been the case. Fingerprinting of children will be "compulsory" from age 12, although the document notes that more sophisticated and expensive software can take account of changes in fingerprints that take place in development from age six. The Summary of discussions from the June meeting of the Council of Ministers' Visa Working Party however shows some divergence in views and practices on the subject. German legislation, for example, sets the minimum at 14, while several other states seem willing to go along with six. The French ("pensez des enfants!") view six as important to combat child trafficking, while the UK (at the bleeding edge, as always) claims to have had no difficulty achieving matches and hits from as young as five.

As the UK's data can only have been produced via pilot studies on a relatively small number of asylum seekers' children, its usefulness with regard to large scale fingerprint databases which haven't been built yet is doubtful. Elsewhere in the document the Commission representative claims that "according to technical studies, fingerprints could be used from the age of six for 'one to one search' but not for search in big databases".

Ah, but what "big databases" might these be? The EU is currently committed to collecting biometric data from visa applicants and storing these on the "Schengen II" database currently under construction. Plans for central storage of the general citizenry's passport biometric data, or for a continent-wide exchange of biometric ID card data, have not as yet been revealed, and although some states (hello, the UK) have plans (currently broken ones) to set up their own databases, others are legally prohibited from doing so.

There is however a slippery slope that begins with centralisation of passport security. The current EU biometric passport specification follows ICAO closely on security requirements, the key difference being over the treatment of fingerprints. These, as we keep saying, are not compulsory under ICAO standards, but ICAO lays down security standards to be met where they are included.

And makes it clear that fingerprint and iris security is the job of the issuer - 'nothing to do with us, Gov' as the subtext clearly says. There's a difference here that's not much noted and deserves wider currency. ICAO's mission is not to identify individuals but to maintain the integrity of the document, and that is the purpose of the PKI system that ICAO will be setting up. It is designed to tell the inspecting authority simply that the passport was properly issued by the competent authority, and when (as is inevitable) particular countries' security systems are compromised, that (so long as everybody else knows about it) is the problem of the particular countries who've wound up issuing dud passports.

A passport can be used as an identity document, of course, but that's nothing to do with ICAO, that's to do with the inspection authority checking that whatever's carrying the document matches information contained in the document. Facial can at the moment be used as a fairly unreliable automated way to do this, hence the fashion for fingerprints, and hence also the need for levels of security that are nothing to do with ICAO. Which, in the case of the EU, means the construction of a "Public Key Infrastructure for Inspection Systems". This, derived from work by Germany's Bundesamt fur Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI), is effectively the EU-run equivalent of the ICAO PKI system intended to protect the document. But don't hold your breath - a technical working group (Brussels Interoperability Group, BIG) "will be established" (our emphasis) to "develop a common Certificate Policy within one year after the Commission Decision on the technical specifications. Then the "Country Verifying CA of each Member State shall [their emphasis] publish a Certificate Policy and may set up a Certification Practice Statement in accordance with the requirements set out by the 'BIG'".

Answering ID card security questions in the House of Commons recently, Home Office Minister Joan Ryan showed herself either blissfully unaware of ICAO's security strictures for fingerprints, or unwilling to share any knowledge she might have had with the rest of us. She certainly seemed to mistake ICAO's document security requirements for overall security requirements. But as the EU has only just got its PKI roadmap out of the door (June 2006), she may not have been entirely alone in this.

So do we go with the biometrics before the security is in place, or do we wait for the EU to set up a secure (which seems improbable to us, at least), EU-wide PKI infrastructure before we go with the biometrics? The House of Lords report cited earlier is relevant here, because it specifically deals with the conflicts between EU security and data protection/privacy standards. The Interior Ministers (via the Council of Ministers and its various spin-off groups) opts for pushing ahead on security (you might categorise its activities here as the A-Z of Big Brotherdom) and then fitting privacy standards in whatever space might be left. And as they do this without proper (or more accurately, any) scrutiny, privacy doesn't get a look in.

On the upside, however, we have yet to see how badly Brussels can screw up a really big, really public IT project, and how dismally the member states will perform when it comes to keeping data accurate, up to date and exchanging it. Schengen II may not be high-profile messy because it will primarily deal with third country nationals (conforming to US standards, we do not care much about these), but betting on a PKI disaster now might be a smart move, and as ID cards used as travel documents will have to conform to ICAO requirements or to "follow a consistent approach to the use of biometric identifiers", then PKI becomes a big internal EU issue.

In the UK, meanwhile, the situation is complicated first by the fact that we're not a Schengen signatory (see Blunkett, Blair and the wonderful world of EU opt ins), so not actually covered by EU passport/bio ID plans, and second by a commitment to ship biometric passports and ID in two to three years time (residence permits for third country nationals first, in 2008). So is it the case that the security systems the UK ID card and the passport (fingerprint version) will use are those to be built as part of Schengen? If it is, why, and will it be ready in time? And if not, will there be a specifically British PKI system instead?

source - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/31/eu_fingerprinting_kids/

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London school to fingerprint students
But only to monitor attendance, school claims

By Kablenet
Tuesday 29th August 2006

A London school is to embark on a trial to fingerprint children when they return to school.

Holland Park School is believed to be one of the first schools in the UK to seek to fingerprint every pupil in an effort to monitor their attendance.

The school said it will test the system, costing about £4,500, on pupils who are late to school from next week before rolling it out to all 1,500 pupils.

It plans to build a database so children can be identified and their time of arrival recorded in a "Live Register" by pressing a finger on an electronic pad. If late arrivals fail to press a pad at the gates or in a classroom they will be recorded as absent.

A spokesperson for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, in which Holland Park School is located, told GC News: "In order for the system to operate students have one finger scanned. No record of the scan is kept. Rather, it is turned by process of algorithm into an individual number that is recorded and recognised when a student places their finger on the reader."

The council also denied that the database is being developed to as part of the government's controversial proposal to build a Children's Index, a national database of under 12s.

"All data is retained in the school as part of our current database and will not be shared with any third party," said the spokesperson.

This article was originally published at Kablenet.

http://www.kablenet.com/kd.nsf/Frontpage/5DBBC938E5E9081F802571D9003B8957?OpenDocument

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Teenagers wary of new children's database
Confidentiality and security concerns

By Kablenet
Tuesday 12th September 2006

Lack of trust may hinder the children's index, according to a new survey.

Teenagers have said they might stop telling practitioners about their problems because they do not trust the confidentiality of the new national children's database.

Research by the Office of the Children's Commissioner (OCC) has revealed that the Children's Information Sharing Index is causing anxiety and arousing suspicion.

Young people, aged 14 to 20, polled by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children for the OCC, said they may be deterred from using family planning and mental health services if they thought information about their use was not confidential. They also said they are worried about the security of the index and the "potential risks" of having such a huge amount of information in one place.

"Several commented that every system has its weaknesses and that they expected there would eventually be a breach of security," the report says.

The teenagers also expressed anxieties that data about them would not always be accurately recorded and kept up to date.

Many of those polled were adamant that teachers should not have use of the system, citing examples of teachers sharing information about bullying which may place them at "greater risk".

The report recommends that the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), which is in charge of the index, and other government departments give serious consideration to maintaining data quality.

An OCC spokesperson told GC News: "(Practitioners) only get limited access to the index and the DfES has just launched a consultation so they can get the views of young people."

The index will be launched in 2008 in England and Wales at an initial cost of £224m. The government says to protect young people the state must gather records on 12m children and their families.

Information held in separate local databases, family doctors' records, nursery reports, and children's examinations will be put into one system.

This article was originally published at Kablenet
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/12/teenagers_wary_of_childrens_index/

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Round up the youthful suspects! Govt to target crime at birth

Children, the country's future... lab rats

By John Lettice
Tuesday 18th July 2006

Children's Minister Hilary Armstrong was due today to outline what could become one of Project Blair's most ambitious, misguided and hubristic projects yet. The Government will attempt to identify children at risk of failure, violent behaviour or criminality at birth, and take the necessary corrective actions to steer them onto a law-abiding and successful path.

Ironically, Armstrong is floating these proposals just as this same predictive approach to future behaviour patterns is becoming discredited. A couple of national newspapers, the Independent and The Observer, appear to have seen outlines of the plans. According to the Independent, midwives, doctors and nurses are to be "asked to identify 'chaotic' families whose babies are in danger of growing up to be delinquents, drug addicts and violent criminals." The plan will be backed up by "research" which "shows that children from the most dysfunctional families are 100 times more likely to abuse alcohol commit crimes or take drugs", and a "source" close to Armstrong says: "It is the 'supernanny' model.' There is no reason why midwives who ask mothers lots questions anyway can't ask a few more about the family circumstances and identify families where there may be problems. We need to intervene early to stop the cycle that leads to social exclusion."

Actually there's every reason, as we will explain shortly. The point worth hanging onto here, however, is that there is a world of difference between taking action to deal with existing problems (which of course will usually grow if left alone) and predicting that problems will exist, and attempting to head them off via early intervention. If you're 'successful', how do you know for sure? And can you be sure that the 'clear' signs of developing problems you've identified have not to a large extent been generated by the monitoring systems you've put in place? This road leads into a swamp of junk science, hokum and voodoo, and down that road we find Tony Blair, who believes that it is possible to predict which two year old is going to turn out to be a troublemaker.

But Action on Rights for Children (ARCH) points out that evidence is stacking up against early intervention, and says: "Far from being, at worst, ineffective, a growing body of research suggests that it can actively do harm." ARCH, produces an extremely useful breakdown of Government children's databases (which are far more numerous than you might think) in the form of a blog, and points to the contribution made to a recent LSE conference (Children: Over Surveilled, Under Protected) by Jean Hine of de Montford University, who is involved in a five university ESRC-funded research programme into "Pathways into Crime."

In Hine's view the thinking underlying initiatives of this sort (which of course hadn't yet been announced) is approximately as follows. Police focuses on children as 'becomings', i.e. they are to some extent blank sheets that will develop into... Well, the Government tends to think of them developing into one of two categories, good or bad. Children are viewed as "passive recipients" of stimulus and intervention, and assessment tools can be used effectively to identify future offenders. Intervention programmes themselves focus on perceived deficits and problems, and tend to ignore strengths. Intervention, the Government policy wonks think, can successfully divert children from the problem path to the 'normal' one.

Unfortunately for the Government (or more accurately, for the future generations now being herded into the labs), the output of the assessment tools is starting to look like voodoo, and in real life, when non-factual data (i.e., value judgments) is poured into data sharing systems, it breeds imaginative and semi-fictional narratives, and in the case of social work, invents whole cases.

The problem with prediction is that although it is possible to identify 'tell-tale' signs in actual offenders, the presence of these does not necessarily identify future offenders. Start with the real villains and work backwards, and the signs were all obviously there, but studies that start with the signs and work forwards don't end up separating the serial criminals from the law abiding. So yes, it may still seem 'obvious' that you can figure out what made people bad and go back to childhood and fix it, but right now you haven't been able to prove it. So stop experimenting on whole generations until you have proved it, OK?

The basic fallacies of the Government's data collection and sharing plans (in the case of children, the Information Sharing Index is central to these) were covered more broadly by the LSE conference. Eileen Munro of the LSE's Department of Social Policy described collecting data as "probably the least useful approach", and noted that although the Government describes information sharing as "the key to successful collaborative working", there is "no empirical evidence" to support this.

The information they're sharing, meanwhile, will become more junk-like as the boxes they need to check and the fields they need to fill in multiply. Social workers, police, anyone who's given the job of spotting early warning signs will feel the need to put something in the box, for all too obvious reasons. What's it going to look like in five years time when some kid on your books gets beaten to death, and it turns out you didn't notice anything? The empty box clearly indicates negligence on your part. So the slightest, part-imagined 'signs' will go down, the people you're sharing the data with will see this 'concern' flagged and put in some 'signs' of your own. And as Brian Sheldon, Emeritus Professor, University of Exeter and former director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Social Work puts it, once social workers decide people need visiting, "they need visiting a lot." Or as Hine says, "if you're looking for problems, you will find problems."

The cases will tend to build themselves, the effect much magnified by the 'share and deploy' approach, and they'll also tend to focus on the easier cases. The ones who're easier to get at and who're on the receiving end of self-generating warning signs will get lots of attention (despite quite possibly never having needed any in the first place), and quite possible acquire real problems because of this, while harder cases of real need may not get any attention at all.

At ground level, midwives (and one presu